How often and how long are breastfeeding sessions?

How long does it take your babies to breastfeed and how long between sessions by age?

Mine are almost three mos and take about 20 min to feed and go around 2.5 hrs between sessions.

Does this sound normal? What about at 4 mos, 6 mos and beyond? Wondering what i have to look forward to.

 

It sounds about right; I think what you will see is that the duration goes down to like 10 minutes or less. Now the interval between feedings I think it stayed about the same, but they slowly drop night feedings.

 

Btw 4-6m we had nice, calm nursing sessions that lasted 10-15min about every 3 hours. That continued with my twins and spaced out to every 4 when they started solids. My current little one is 8m and it takes longer to feed her, mainly because she pops off and looks around for every noise, tries to flip over and crawl while feeding, etc!

 

At 3 months, my twins took about 30-40 minutes to nurse & nursed every 2.5-3 hrs around the clock. By 6 months, it was more like 10-15 min every 3 hrs or so. Once they were taking in more solids, they spaced out to every 4 hrs or so.

There are so many variables (babe's weight, age, suck, latch, your milk flow, milk storage capacity, whether you've started your period again or not, etc) that go into how long & often babies nurse that it's hard to say what's "normal". As long as your babes are pooping/peeing an adequate amount, growing, developing & generally content, whatever their nursing pattern is, is good.

 

I agree that each baby has his/her own "normal."
My LO is 7.5 months. He's pretty efficient about nursing--always has been. 10 minutes is usually max. He continues to nurse about every 3 hours around the clock. Sometimes he gives me a little longer once during the night (4-5 hrs). We have been slowly introducing solids, but he isn't very interested, so we're not pushing it. Maybe when he gets used to solids and is eating more he'll space out nursings.

 

Sounds normal to me. I saw a big jump in spacing out feedings at about 3 months. Since then, my girls can go about 3.5-4 hours during they day if they are distracted. At home on a regular day, it's about every 2-3 hours. At night we are going through a rough spot right now and are lucky if we get 4 .

Also, they are very different nursers. Chana has always been faster and more efficient, she is done in ten minutes or less. Mushka needs a good 20 minutes and likes to stop, look around, eat, stop, talk a bit, eat, stop, etc etc.

 

My twins are an anomaly I think! They are 7 weeks/ 2 weeks adjusted. DD nurses for 10-15 minutes every 3-4 hours during the day and recently every 5-6 hours at night. DS isn't as efficient, he nurses 20-25 minutes every 2-3 hours during the day and 3-4 hours at night. I initially had problems with forceful let down and choking etc, but that may be the main reason things are speedy. If only I could get DS on the same schedule as his sister...